Characterization of Broadband Focusing Microwave Metasurfaces at Oblique Incidence

We report the characterization of an achromatic focusing metasurface at oblique incident angles. We show that in addition to the inherent off-axis aberrations that occur due to the hyperbolic phase profile of the metasurface, the focusing performance is significantly degraded due to the meta-atoms’ angular dispersion. To obtain insights into how the angular and spectral bandwidth of meta-atoms relate to the metasurface focusing performance, point dipole models are used which incorporate different aspects of the meta-atoms’ angular response. It is emphasized that despite the meta-atoms being designed under the assumption that they support a single dipolar resonance, other resonances exist within the meta-atom geometry and become stronger at oblique incidence. These resonances disturb the designed phase and amplitude responses, resulting in lower focusing efficiency at higher incident angles. The modeling of higher order modes leads to good agreement with the experimental measurements, confirming that angular dispersion of the meta-atoms is the dominant mechanism in determining off-axis aberrations.